Camp Trash – The Long Way, The Slow Way | Album Review

I love deceptive music. More specifically, I love pop music that is so bubblegum it becomes saccharine. Those types of songs where the more that sickly sweet flavor sits on your tongue, you begin to realize how dark and upsetting it is. You can spit out the gum if you want to, but you can’t get rid of the taste it left in your mouth. No, it’s gonna stay there. It’s gonna remind you of the decision you made to ingest this seemingly delightful candy. You’ve been duped, and now you have to see the song for its true colors. 

Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” comes to mind. Filled with blaring guitar chords and “doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo’s,” the song deftly slides into your subconscious. You’re singing along, and you don’t even realize it. Maybe you’re starting to get a sense of what lies beneath the surface, but when Stephan Jenkins finally utters the words “crystal meth,” the glass breaks, and it is now all too clear that you’ve been singing along to a stark drug ballad. There is no coming back from this; it’s the “Ring Around The Rosie” effect. You can keep shouting the lyrics, but you will always know what the song is about.

Florida’s Camp Trash practices this sort of arcane magic. Their debut album, The Long Way, The Slow Way, is filled with songs like “Semi-Charmed Life.” The tracks come across as summery indie rock loaded with massive hooks and slick melodies. You know where I’m going with this. The lyrics are not in line with the instruments. They’re pained and anxious self-assessments that are harsh but honest. 

“When did I get so hard to love?” muses Bryan Gorman over a punchy drum beat on “Soft.” Early single “Weird Florida” is a high-energy pop rock song that begs to be blasted from a boombox while you cannonball into the pool with your boys but acts as a facade for the story of a summer relationship that was doomed from the start. The penultimate track, “Riley,” digs into the apathy of knowing you need to end a relationship but wanting the other person to call it off because you can’t do it yourself. 

Many songs have that cool, breezy tone mastered by bands like Built to Spill, but in no way are they derivative. Camp Trash can write one hell of a hook, but they are more than just a pop rock band. On my favorite track, “Another Harsh Toyotathon,” they step outside of the radio hit structure to deliver something that falls somewhere between Pavement and Jesu. Behind the heavily distended bass, Gorman delivers one of the more savage burns I’ve heard in years as he shouts, “You’re an only child: what do you know about being replaced?” Album closer “Feel Something” even hints at the possibility that, in spite of all of the anxiety and self-doubt that’s expressed throughout the album, meaningful change can be achieved.

So maybe not all of the songs on The Long Way, The Slow Way fit my bubblegum analogy, but a lot of them do, so I’m sticking to it. But don’t let my willingness to die on this self-constructed hill deter you from Camp Trash’s achievement because this is one of the most well-crafted debuts to come along in a long while. 

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Connor lives in Emeryville with his partner and their cat and dog, Toni and Hachi. Connor is a student at San Francisco State University and is working toward becoming a community college professor. When he isn’t listening to music or writing about killer riffs, Connor is obsessing over coffee and sandwiches.

Follow him on Twitter.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees | Album Review

I’m a firm believer in not engaging with art until the time is right. I didn’t see Goodfellas until I was twenty-three; the movie had somehow fallen through the cracks for me, but once I felt like an embarrassing amount of time had passed, I finally gave it a watch, and it changed my life. Sure, if I had seen it earlier in my life, it still might have left a sizable impact on me, but I don’t think I would have appreciated it to the level I did at twenty-three. There’s something cosmically gratifying in allowing yourself to engage with a piece of art when the time is right. 

This approach also goes for things that don’t click right away. Sometimes I will listen to a band and find something interesting in their music, but we just aren’t syncing together. It’s like when you’re listening to the radio in your car and you spin the dial just a bit off the station–you can still hear the song, but there’s this fuzzy distortion that prevents you from fully experiencing it.

For years, this was my relationship with The Brian Jonestown Massacre. In hindsight, I judged the band without really knowing much about them. What I knew about the group was that they made spacey garage rock that rested in the middle of a Venn diagram containing 60s psychedelia and shoegaze. Music like this is very much my kinda thing, but in a stroke of sophomoric arrogance, I thought, “I have My Bloody Valentine and Spiritualized; what do I need this band for?” I lived in this ignorance for over a decade until earlier this year when a friend gave me an extra ticket to their show at The Fillmore in San Francisco.

I’m not one to turn down a free ticket, plus the show was on 4/20, so I figured it was a sign from above. Stoned, I packed into the back of the crowd with my friend and his buddies and proceeded to have one of the most entertaining live experiences ever. Having little frame of reference for Brian Jonestown Massacre, I was tickled by frontman Anton Newcombe’s primadonna behavior as he complained to the sound tech that his vocals sounded too much like opener Mercury Rev’s, scolded the drummer for not playing the parts correctly, and argued with the keyboardist about whether or not he was being too much of a dick to the band. To some, this might have been off-putting, but I found it hilarious and even charming because, despite all of the potentially staged antics, the band sounded great. I left the show a convert.

The following day I waded deep into the internet as I tried to learn as much as possible about The Brian Jonestown Massacre. I watched videos containing literal fights on stage and an appearance Newcombe made on Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, but when it came time to dive into the actual music, I found myself overwhelmed. This band embodies what it means to be prolific, having released nineteen albums, not counting compilations, live albums, EPs, and singles. There’s just so much. Should I start from the beginning, or would I be better off listening to landmark albums that stand as pillars in their discography? I still don’t know the right answer.

My path toward unraveling the group’s history has been fittingly tumultuous. I tried variations of these methods which left my brain in knots, but then I was given a promo of their nineteenth album, Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees, to review. To say that this album unlocked what BJM is all about for me is wrong, but I feel like it grounded me as I listened to it day in and day out for almost a month. 

The album opens with “The Real,” which sets the tone for the next thirty-eight minutes with its trancelike guitars and drums that repeat without relent. Like any intense high, Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees is riddled with euphoria, paranoia, and melancholy. “It’s About Being Free Really” is a blissful psychpop ditty soaked in warm fuzz and upbeat rhythms. Disguised as an infectious, warm worm, “Silenced” sees ​​Newcombe almost rapping as he rapidly rattles off thoughts about hearing gossip and feelings of isolation. The low and hazy lullaby, “Before And Afterland,” appears halfway through the album, climaxing with a glimpse of clarity as Newcombe sings, “I was born in this world to lose / My destiny’s not for you to choose” before slipping back into its stupor. The remaining songs are well-constructed garage rock fare that maintain the feeling of stoned relaxation rather than continue the wild excitement of the first half. Ultimately, Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees goes down smooth as the record’s constant buzzing of distortion locks you into a singular headspace. You’ll get close to a full panic, but in the end, that feeling subsides in favor of tranquility.

After emerging from my den, I began to hopscotch through BJM’s discography. I checked out a few albums that preceded Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees to see if maybe they spoke to one another. Maybe they did, but who can really say? It’s certainly far removed from the shoegaze of their debut Methodrone. I guess that’s where the beauty lies when an artist is genuinely prolific. When scrutinized under a microscope, you can see the individual strokes and discern the differences, but when you take a few steps back, you begin to see how it all blends together, creating a cohesive body of work.

If I could see into the future, I would be able to tell you if my relationship with The Brian Jonestown Massacre deepens and flourishes to the point that I become a real head, but I can’t. It’s not about that; it’s about appreciating the music for what it is when it’s clicking. And right now, I'm deep in the groove.

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Connor lives in Emeryville with his partner and their cat and dog, Toni and Hachi. Connor is a student at San Francisco State University and is working toward becoming a community college professor. When he isn’t listening to music or writing about killer riffs, Connor is obsessing over coffee and sandwiches.

Follow him on Twitter.

Bartees Strange – Farm to Table | Album Review

I’ve never been as excited to see the opener for one of my favorite bands as I was when I saw Bartees Strange supporting Car Seat Headrest. I showed up early enough to hear the blaring horns of “Heavy Heart” during soundcheck, the explosiveness of Farm To Table’s fiery, brass-backed lead single palpable even through Brooklyn Steel’s cinder block walls. I loved “Heavy Heart” just as much then, but now having heard it in the context of his sophomore album, it’s proven to be the perfect opener for a record that begs the question: once our blessings finally come, how should we receive them? 

The couplet that opens the song (and the album itself)-- “there’s reasons for heavy hearts/this past year I thought I was broken” –lets us in on the often destabilizing feeling of getting a long-awaited win after a series of losses. Though Strange takes pride in his accomplishments, he’s wary that such acclaim could compromise his values or make him lose sight of what’s been motivating him in the first place:

I never want to miss you this bad
I never want to run out like that
Sometimes I feel just like my dad, rushing around
I never saw the God in that
Why work so hard if you can’t fall back?
Then I remember I rely too much upon my heavy heart

Strange’s path to success has been a long and unconventional one, to say the least. Born Bartees Cox Jr. in Ipswich, England, the eldest son of an Air Force engineer father and an opera singer mother, he had a transient, international childhood before settling in Mustang, Oklahoma at age 12. Much of his early musical education came in the form of church choir performances and piano and vocal lessons from his mom. During high school and his first year of college, he played football and had hopes of making it to the NFL, but soon realized that it wasn’t a viable enough option, and that the exploitation and lack of support he experienced as a Black student-athlete weren’t worth the risk. After transferring schools and getting his degree from Oklahoma University, he moved to Washington DC to work as an FCC press secretary under the Obama administration. Following this position, he bounced between DC and Brooklyn, producing for various artists, playing in the post-hardcore band Stay Inside, and releasing two solo EPs– a 2017 collection of folk songs titled Magic Boy under the name Bartees & the Strange Fruit, and 2020’s Say Goodbye To Pretty Boy in which he covered five songs by The National, a band he cites as one of his biggest influences (and who he’ll be supporting on an upcoming tour). Just months after releasing SGTBP, he dropped his breakout debut album, Live Forever, a transformative anti-genre behemoth that skyrocketed him to indie fame. 

Flash forward to late 2021, and it seemed like all the big-name indie rock artists were lining up to take Strange on tour. He sounded almost timid introducing himself to the crowd when I saw him open for Car Seat Headrest at their 3-night Brooklyn Steel run in March, but when he launched into a rousing performance of “Mustang,” it was as though a switch had flipped. Whatever shyness I’d seen moments earlier melted away entirely as he tore into the Live Forever single with the force of the titular horses that gallop through the track’s second verse– “I just wait for my horses now.” It’s been a slow climb, and he’s been patient, but Strange isn’t waiting anymore. Everything he’s been working toward is here for the taking. As brilliant as he was as a first act, and as deserving as he is of all the exposure he’s gotten from supporting more established artists, I saw someone who’d outgrown his indie rock opener status. His sound felt too big. His name was worthy of stadium marquees and the largest font on festival flyers. I have very little doubt that the next time I see Strange, he’ll be the one headlining. He’s more than ready for it, and Farm To Table proves that a million times over. 

It’s an album that feels present in every sense of the word, despite its watchful eye on the past. Many of these songs see Strange reflecting on his upbringing, his current perspective both illuminated and disrupted by physical and temporal distance from childhood. On the quiet, acoustic closer “Hennessy,” he examines the racist stereotypes that he was inundated with during his formative years in Mustang, Oklahoma, a city whose near-90% white population often made Strange– a Black kid who’d spent his early years living all over the world –feel like an outsider. The line “sometimes I don’t feel like I’m the man” is both a humble admission of self-doubt and a solemn contrast from the opening bars of his 2020 breakout single “Boomer,” in which he boasts, “aye bruh, aye bruh, aye bruh/look I’m the man.” Before launching into a dissolving, multilayered outro, Strange attempts to find solace through love and community: “Hold you in my arms, remind you that you’re gold/Can’t feel the pain if I’m holding onto you.” He doesn’t sound entirely sure of himself but nonetheless clings to whatever semblance of hope he has left.

“Black Gold” and “Tours” also focus on Strange’s childhood memories. On the former, he alternates from a gravelly baritone to a shimmering falsetto as he attempts to reconcile past mistakes with current wisdom:

I was way too rough with how I left my town
Now it’s big city lights for a country mouse
I can recall waiting for you
I feel you now, with every move

The lyrics are interspersed with what sounds like audio from a home video, fuzzy recordings of people singing and chattering over a delicate string arrangement that evokes the flickering of fireflies on a summer evening.

On “Tours,” Strange draws thematic parallels between the demands of his father’s military job and those of his current-day career as a touring musician. Much like in “Heavy Heart,” he finds himself considering the toll his father’s distance took on his family and suggesting that his own tours might have similar effects on his loved ones in the present day. Throughout this reckoning, he maintains a deep sense of gratitude toward both of his parents, which comes in the form of memory preservation. The nature of memory is fragmented in and of itself, and like many of us, Strange feels obligated to retain as much as he can so as not to lose crucial chapters of his– and his family’s –personal history. He becomes his parents’ archivist, weaving their shared experiences into a musical narrative to overcome the risk of losing these precious stories. Even the ones that are painful to look back on are worth holding on to:

Wipe the tears from her face
Mom would break down once a day
Looking back, I know that she tried so hard
When I’d hide from thunder, scared that I’d wake my mother
If I were my father I’d wonder who’s checking for monsters

The childlike confusion and melancholia of “Tours” leads beautifully into “Hold The Line,” the album’s third single, dedicated to Gianna Floyd. In a statement released along with the single, Strange said that the song was inspired by “watching George Floyd’s daughter talk about the death of her father and thinking wow– what a sad introduction to Black American life for this young person.” Then-six-year-old Gianna not only experienced the unimaginable loss of her father but was also forced to grieve for an international audience. You’d see photos of her visiting the White House and video footage of her testifying for her father and think, she shouldn’t have to do this. It’s unfathomable to think of how a child might even begin to make sense of such horrendous violence– violence that, sadly, is nothing out of the ordinary. Having explored his own firsthand experiences with anti-Black racism through songwriting, Strange mourns for the Black kids whose childhoods are tainted with the same hatred. He eulogizes George Floyd– “the man with that big ol’ smile” –with grief for those that he alone cannot protect. 

Strange has an innate ability to tap into the surreal powerlessness that can make being alive right now feel so paralyzing. Alt-country banger “Escape This Circus” opens with a reference to Gil Scott-Heron’s 1970 spoken-word poem “Whitey’s On The Moon”-- just as relevant now as it was then, if not more. One percent of Americans own nearly a third of the nation’s wealth, and instead of using it to feed and house those living in poverty, they’re building cars that spontaneously combust– we call this progress. Few lyrics this year have sounded quite as timely as, “I’m in a fancy place/paid too much for the room/The clerk he says to buy some crypto/he’s got holes in his shoes.” Capitalism’s a sick game that we’re all forced to play, and almost no one wins. You can hear the exhaustion in Strange’s voice as he sings, “we’re all part of this circus/we’re all on our own horses''-- once again calling to mind the horses in 2020’s “Mustang.” He’d tossed the line “I hate America” into that track with a similar sense of resignation, beaten down by a neverending dystopian carnival whose games are rigged by design. “Escape This Circus”’s true catharsis comes in its erratic, reverb-drenched outro, with Strange wailing, “that’s why I really can’t fuck with y’all,” in a desperate attempt to pull the carousel’s emergency brake and free himself.

Back in April when Strange announced that he’d signed to 4AD for his sophomore album, he made his grand entrance to the historic London record label with “Cosigns,” a sleek and celebratory trap-rock banger in which he exercises his well-earned bragging rights. In his cleverest and cockiest bars, he shouts out the big dogs that he’s playing with, including 2/3s of Boygenius, idiosyncratic Australian rocker Courtney Barnett, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, new labelmates Big Thief, and 4AD founder Martin Mill:

I’m in LA, I’m with Phoebe, I’m a genius, damn
I’m in Chi-Town, I’m with Lucy, I just got the stamp
Hit up Courtney, that’s my Aussie, I already stan
I’m on FaceTime, I’m with Justin, we already friends
We already friends, we already friends
I’m on FaceTime, I’m with Justin, we already friends
I’m a thief when things get big, look Imma steal your fans
I’m with Martin in the mill, we grindin’, makin’ bread

The stunning music video directed by Pooneh Ghana shows Strange at the head of a stylishly set outdoor table (seemingly not far from the farm). As his impeccably dressed guests tear savagely into their meals at the song’s bridge, Strange takes off running and hides in a mystical, flower-covered cave. The braggadociousness that characterized the first half of the track is contrasted with an ambivalence about his newfound fame, and his ambition is once again at odds with the precariousness of success: “How to be full, it’s the hardest to know/I keep consuming, I can’t give it up/Hungry as ever, it’s never enough.” 

Listening to Farm To Table feels like watching an artist self-actualize in real-time. When Strange sings, “I was trying to be something wretched/Something I saw on TV,” on the album’s fourth and final single, “Wretched,” we see him fulfilling his own potential, becoming a version of himself that he both feared and aspired to. It’s yet another track in which he artfully folds these contradictions into catchy, danceable hooks. He’s cautious of the blessings he receives, wanting to celebrate them but still wondering if there’s a catch. 

Much like it was on Live Forever, his art is a struggle against mortality, a fleeting chance to create something that will transcend and outlive him. On “Mulholland Dr.”— a track rife with influence from longtime Strange favorites The National and TV On The Radio —he grapples with the ephemerality of both the sweet and the bitter, and of life itself, striving to make good use of the time he has:

I don’t believe in the bullshit
Of wondering when we die
I’ve seen the ending
It’s all in your face and your eyes
I’ve seen how we die
I know how to lose

If Live Forever earned Bartees Strange a seat at the titular table, Farm to Table not only sees him sitting at its head, but telling the story of how he got there. In the end, it’s Strange’s gratitude that keeps him– and his art –grounded. Everything he creates is imbued with a deep respect for his craft and for  those who’ve supported him. Even through the fear and anguish and regret, he shows his appreciation every step of the way. The (strange) fruits of his labor are served, and the rest of us are lucky enough to enjoy the bountiful harvest he’s provided. So say thanks, because it’s time to eat. 

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Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn, New York. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at @grace_roso.

Long Neck – Gardener | Single Review

What happens when you find the light at the end of the tunnel, but instead of allowing you to see things more clearly, it just ends up hurting your eyes? When hardships that are supposed to make you more resilient end up making you feel even weaker? When you become so comfortable with the familiarity of darkness that it feels like a safer option than heading into the unknown of the morning? On “Gardener,” the latest release from Jersey City DIY project Long Neck, singer/songwriter/Long Neck band founder Lily Mastrodimos draws the listener a portrait of this in-between state; of the slow, often reluctant emergence from a depressive haze. 

It starts with just an acoustic guitar, delicate and melodic, as Mastrodimos begins relaying a series of dark, foreboding dreams she’s been having the past couple of nights. Her voice sways between conversational and storybook– though never too flowery. It almost feels as though she’s just waking up from these dreams, like echoes of these strange visions are still lingering in her mind as she transitions from night to day:

Nothing in the sky
No planes passing by
When the sun emerges
I am baffled by its glare
Gold dust in the air
Mornings are unbearable
I said to no one

The build of this first verse is accompanied by a lush swell of strings, joining the stripped-back instrumental as the sun rises. As backing vocalist R.N. Taylor begins to harmonize with Mastrodimos, we can almost feel the two of them blinking back at the oppressive brightness of those first rays of sunshine. 

“Gardener” is the lead single off of Long Neck’s forthcoming LP Soft Animal, the band’s first record since before the pandemic. It’s a gradual awakening from a hibernation of sorts. As COVID-era precautions are rolled back and the rhetoric of “bouncing back” surrounds us, our current transitional era often feels as though we’re being force-fed normalcy at a rate that’s incongruous with the ongoing crisis. Instead of filling in the gaps that caused the pandemic to wreak the kind of havoc that it did (and continues to do), we’ve been rushed into a sorry approximation of pre-pandemic social conditions that are no longer viable (and, in many circumstances, were never viable to being with). It’s hard to celebrate the pandemic being over when it’s, well, not. Instead of actual relief, we’re forced to continue carrying the burden of a poorly handled public health catastrophe while pretending that it’s all behind us.

On “Gardener,” Mastrodimos grapples with a similar pressure (albeit on a more personal level) to make a quick and easy recovery from past struggles, but can’t do so without processing what she’s been through. She finds herself worn down by the heaviness of her heart rather than strengthened by it, sighing, “everything I’ve felt this week has bent me like a spine/vertebrae unlined/cracking more with time.” Her voice carries an uneasiness and uncertainty. There’s a sense that, though the worst of it may be over, what comes next is still unclear. After all, how can one get “back to normal” when the standard for “normal” has fallen?

The picture of progress we get on “Gardener” isn’t a linear one. We see Mastrodimos give in to the temptation to shut out the world and sleep past noon. Still, her stagnant moments don’t negate her steps forward. The sun is still there even when it’s filtered through her closed curtains. On good days she can “plant gardens with [her] heart,” just don’t expect those flowers to bloom right away.

“Gardener” is out now on all streaming platforms.
Soft Animal releases on June 21st via Plastic Miracles and Specialist Subject, you can pre-order the album on Bandcamp here.

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Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn, New York. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at @grace_roso.

Prince Daddy & The Hyena – Self-Titled | Album Review

Since 2018 Prince Daddy & The Hyena has been a massively influential band in my life. I remember hearing “I Wish I Could ctrl+alt+del My Life” come on the playlist at my café job and RUN-ning to the office to see who was singing it. “Prince Daddy & The Hyena,” I said to myself. “That’s a weird name, I sure hope I don’t form some kind of intense, parasocially emotional connection to this band that lasts for years, maybe even the rest of my life.”

But I did.

I’ve learned a lot of lessons both as a musician and writer from PDaddy. This band taught me it’s okay to make incredibly specific (potentially impenetrable) references to the movies and tv shows you relate all your feelings to. They helped me affirm that guitar rock is still awesome, and perhaps most importantly, they taught me not to be afraid to indulge in oversharing my feelings and mistakes with anyone who might be willing to listen. So really you only have them to thank for this extra-long intro.

The moment that crystallized the pandemic as reality for me came on March 13th, 2020. My partner and I were sitting in the cafeteria of Halifax’s Queen Elizabeth II hospital, waiting for my mom to get out of dental surgery, when the tweets came in. “Tour’s canceled,” I imagine they said. I don’t know, I’m not going to scroll back through two full years worth of tweets. I've already put off proofreading this article long enough. My partner was living in Montreal and we had plans to see Prince Daddy there and in Toronto and sing along to *every* word from Cosmic Thrill Seekers, which was the style at the time. We had the tickets. My flight was booked. There was so much uncertainty back then, and rather than cancel my flight and risk not seeing her again until god knows when I kept my ticket and spent three months in an experimental cohabitation that never would have happened without PDaddy. Cosmic Thrill Seekers being one of my top 5 all-time favourite albums to run to meant they carried me through a lot of days during that time, and I’m so grateful for that. It’s still one of my favourite memories of the pandemic?

And while that relationship eventually ended, Prince Daddy & The Hyena persists.

I was so nervous in the weeks before Cosmic Thrill Seekers was released. How could it possibly live up to the perfection of PDaddy’s first LP, I Thought You Didn’t Even Like Leaving. Considering the space CTS takes up in my heart, it feels silly now to have ever felt that way. So I’m not sure why I did it again in the lead up to this brand new, self-titled LP. Maybe I keep my hopes low to avoid being let down. Maybe I just tend to anticipate the worst in everything.

But hey, I learned it from the best.

Prince Daddy & The Hyena (the album) is a perfect representation of everything Prince Daddy & The Hyena (the band) have spent the past six years building on. For how honest and raw lyricist Kory Gregory has been since day one, he always finds new ways of removing barriers with each release. CTS has less of the “keep the world at arm's length” snarky humor that appears so often throughout Leaving, and with this self-titled, he allows us to hear his actual singing voice more regularly. It’s a subtle softening of boundaries across a body of work that’s incredibly impressive.

PDaddy has always been a band with firm control over their vast dynamic range, and here they’ve honed it to a sharp edge. While tracks like “A Random Exercise in Impernance,” “Shoelaces,” and “Keep up That Talk” smother you with a familiar frantic energy, moments such as “Something Special” and “Discount Assisted Living” are welcome opportunities to breathe. They’ll also break your fucking heart.

The highlight track, for me, has to be “Hollow As You Figured.” Opening quietly with an unsettling guitar riff that sets the stage for one of Gregory’s deeper explorations of the dark places that isolation can bring us to—eventually combusting into the heaviest riffs of the album and possibly PDaddy’s catalogue.

As a 30-something Canadian, it’s hard not to compare it to Sum41’s third album Chuck and the more mature themes and musical style the band explored within. I won’t, but just know that if I did, it would be with all the love in my heart.

Probably the most impressive feat of the album is “Black Mold.” The message I sent to my band’s group chat upon opening my advance SoundCloud streaming link was, “new prince daddy has a fucking nine-minute song on it.” I know what you’re thinking, and yes, while I didn’t let anybody hear the album before it came out, I did brag to two of my closest friends that I would get to listen to it early because I am a “professional.” As the emotional climax of the record, we have our hands held as we’re taken on a tour of various traumas from the singer’s past, a familiar recurring theme for longtime listeners. What blows me away is that there are no wasted moments in this song. Nine minutes is a LONG time, but it never feels like that here. It’s an extension of PDaddy’s ability to weave multiple pieces together as seen on Leaving and CTS, and a testament to their more operatic tendencies.

Prince Daddy & The Hyena the band proved my doubts about Prince Daddy & The Hyena the album wrong just like they did with Cosmic Thrill Seekers: You can improve on perfection.

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Cailen Alcorn Pygott is a writer, musician, and general sadsack from Halifax, Nova Scotia. He’ll tell you even more about his anxieties on his band No, It’s Fine.’s album I Promise. Tell him how brave you think that is on Twitter @noitsfinereally and on Instagram @_no_its_fine_.

His top five albums to run to of all time are:

1. Mom Jeans - Sweet Tooth

2. Gregory Pepper And His Problems - I Know Now Why You Cry 

3. Prince Daddy & The Hyena - Cosmic Thrill Seekers

4. Bowling For Soup - The Hangover You Didn’t Deserve 

5. Charly Bliss - Guppy

Honorable mention: Dollar Signs - This Will Haunt Me